R. C. PUNNETT AND THE LATE MaJOR P. G. BaILEY 47 



general colour however was much redder than that of a Brown Leg- 

 horn $ , while he had a black breast and the characteristic chestnut 

 wing-bow of the Brown Leghorn cock. Mated with a Brown Leghorn 

 hen (Exp. 19) he gave 17 chicks, all brown-striped. They proved deli- 

 cate, however, and only five {^ ^ ^ and 1 ?) were reared to maturity. 

 Of the 4 (/(/, two were exactly like normal Brown Leghorns; one was 

 like a Brown Leghorn, except that the breast feathers were mixed 

 salmon and black instead of full black; and the last, a henny bird 

 (</ 338), was very like the father. The solitary hen was indistinguish- 

 able in appearance from a Brown Leghorn. She proved to carry the 

 henny factor (Exp. 38), and was subsequently mated with ^ 338 in 

 the hope of establishing a homozygous henny Brown Leghorn strain. 

 Unfortunately the union proved sterile. But although both ^ 242 and 

 ^ 338 were, apart from the henny factor, almost certainly genetically 

 similar to the Brown Leghorn, and although, at some period, both were 

 fully henny birds, nevertheless their colour was very different from that 

 of the Brown Leghorn hen. The most noticeable differences were (a) the 

 retention of the chestnut-brown wing-bow, (6) the presence of black or 

 black and salmon feathers on the breast, and (c) the presence in the 

 saddle of warm chestnut-brown feathers, as well as of others shewing 

 some beetling, interspersed among the brown mossed hen-like feathers. 



We are therefore inclined to think that in the breeds belonging to 

 our second group, where sexual colour differences exist apart from the 

 sex feathers, the heterozygous bird may be fully henny in plumage 

 structure, but not in colour. Whether the plumage would be fully 

 hen-like in colour in a homozygous henny cock is a point we have been 

 unable hitherto to decide. But there is evidence for supposing this to 

 be the case. In the picture of light red hennies given in Cassell's Illus- 

 trated Book of Poultry (1876), on Plate 25, the colour of the two sexes 

 is identical, the cock having a deep salmon breast and saddle feathers 

 coloured exactly like the hen. We are also indebted to Mr Herbert 

 Atkinson, the well-known authority on Game Fowl, for the information 

 that the true breeding pile henny cock is coloured like the hen. 



On the whole therefore the available evidence suggests that the 

 henny factor may bring about a complete change to the henny condition 

 in the heterozygous bird both in the structure of the feathers and in 

 the colour of the sexual feathers, but, where the sexes differ in colour in 

 other than the sexual feathers, the bird must be homozygous before the 

 colour change is complete. 



